


When Will You Die?

by FootlessData507



Series: Tremendously Stupid Writing Club Prompts [4]
Category: The X-Files, They Might Be Giants
Genre: Gen, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 09:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12187356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FootlessData507/pseuds/FootlessData507
Summary: Mulder and Scully see someone unexpected when they are out to lunch.





	When Will You Die?

**Author's Note:**

> This short drabble was the product of a writing club meeting where I was instructed to write a story based on the They Might Be Giants song "When Will You Die?" The Smoking Man came to mind immediately.

“Duck your head down!”

Scully wasn’t sure why Mulder had bothered to issue the instruction, considering that while he was in the process of issuing it, he placed his hand on Scully’s head and pushed it down for her.

“Mulder!” Scully yelped, her cheek pressed against the laminated menu that was lying on the diner table. “What is going on?” She shook her head free of Mulder’s hand, sat up straight in her booth, and glared at the space he had recently occupied, only to find that he had now sunk as far down in the booth as his frame would permit. The crest of his brown hair was barely visible over his crumpled napkin.

“I said, get down!” Again Mulder’s arm reached over the Formica table and pushed Scully’s head. This time he succeeded in pushing her so she lay horizontally on the booth.

She glared at Mulder, whose head was now visible under the table. Also visible under the table: what looked like twenty years’ worth of gum.

“What,” Scully hissed at Mulder, “has gotten into you?”

“He’s here,” he said simply.

“Mulder, unless you tell me what’s going on right now, I am marching out of this Denny’s—” She started to straighten up, and he grabbed her elbow and yanked her back down.

“No—no! He’ll see you!” Mulder exclaimed.

 “Who’s _he?”_

 _“Cancer man!”_ Mulder explained. “He’s sitting at the counter on other side of the room!”

            In the smoking section, naturally, Scully deduced.

            She glared at her partner. “So?” she asked.

            “So?” Mulder gaped at her. “So _he will see us!”_

“And?”

            “ _And…”_ Mulder looked at her like she’d grown an extra head. _“Maybe he’ll come over!”_

            “So what if he does?” Scully snapped. “We’re having lunch at a crowded Denny’s at 12:15 on a Tuesday. We are surrounded by people. He’s not going to shoot us. He’s not going to abduct us. We’re perfectly safe.” She straightened up, swatting away Mulder’s hand. “Sit up, Mulder,” she ordered.

            Mulder remained under the table.

            “You look ridiculous and people are starting to stare,” she said, which was perfectly true. They had attracted the attention of a couple of truckers sitting at the counter. “Sit up,” she ordered again, “or I am walking over to him and inviting him to join us.”

            “You wouldn’t,” she heard Mulder insist from under the table.

            “I would.” She started to get up, and Mulder shot up in his seat.

            “Fine,” he grumbled. He glared in the direction of the Smoking Man, and Scully followed his glance to see the elderly man sitting alone, hunched over a bowl of soup.

            When she turned back to Mulder, she noticed he was shredding his napkin. “I hate that man,” he announced unnecessarily.

            “I know,” she patted him on the shoulder, “I hate him too, Mulder.”

            “You’d think with the carton he goes through every day, he would have just keeled over and died by now,” Mulder pointed out. “There’s no justice in this world.”

            Scully quietly agreed and wondered when the waitress would be over.

            Mulder’s eyes were still fixed past her. “When that man dies, it should be a federal holiday.”

            The waitress was now approaching them. She set down Scully’s salad and Mulder’s club sandwich, before batting her eyes at Mulder and asking if there was anything else she could get them. Mulder didn’t reply—hadn’t even seemed to notice her—and Scully had to assure the waitress that that was all.

            She began picking at her salad. Mulder didn’t touch his sandwich.

            “I’m so tired of that man’s lies,” he said. “He killed Deep Throat. And he denies it, but I’m sure he was behind my dad’s murder, too.”

            “Mmmhmm.” Scully chased an uncooperative cherry tomato with her fork.

            “He almost killed you.”

            Scully nodded in agreement. Then she gave up on the cherry tomato and speared a slice of cucumber instead.

            “The day that he dies,” Mulder announced, “I’m taking out a full page, color ad in the Washington Post.”

            “Right.” Scully tried for the cherry tomato once more, but again it eluded her.

            “It’ll be a great day,” Mulder asserted. “School children will stay at home. All the banks will close.”

            “Uh-huh.” Now Scully picked up her knife and used that to trap the tomato. Success, at last.

            “You and me, Scully,” Mulder promised, “we’re going to jump up and down and dance on his grave.”

            “I’ll remember not to wear heels on that day,” Scully commented. She munched on her lettuce and wondered if they had some complimentary newspapers up front. Clearly, she wasn’t going to get any engaging conversation from her companion.

            “And from then on, we’ll mark the date,” Mulder continued, his eyes still glued on the old man, who was now struggling to open his bag of oyster crackers. “We’ll call it the Death of Cancer Man Day.” Mulder flexed his jaw. “Happiest day of the year, better than Christmas and Hanukah rolled together.  Tell me,” he harshly exhaled, “is there any evil thing that man hasn’t done?”

            Well, Scully considered to herself, he probably had never invited his partner to lunch and spent the whole time obsessing about someone else.

            "Yeah, sip that split pea soup, you bastard," Mulder murmured, rotating his taut jaw slowly. "But some day, some promised morning, we'll wake and greet the dawn, and we'll know, just _know_ that your wicked life is over and that we will carry on. And then we'll take deep breaths in our healthy, tobacco-free lungs, and for the first time in ages, we'll feel truly alive." 

            Scully looked down at her salad bowl to find its only remaining contents were three cherry tomatoes. She sighed.

            What a crummy birthday lunch.


End file.
